


Last Call

by Zelos



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Aftermath, Gen, Medical Procedures, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 19:31:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3822145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zelos/pseuds/Zelos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>“I’m a nurse,” Claire answered, giving Matt’s wounds a test prod with gloved fingers. The lidocaine should be kicking in about now. “Not an idiot.”</p>
</blockquote><p>A missing scene in between "Speak of the Devil" and "Nelson v. Murdock".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Call

“So.”

Claire hissed a breath between her teeth. But he was barely a foot from her, holding up her light source, and she could see his every change in expression out of the corner of her eyes: each flicker, each swallow, each time he bit his lip.

Midway through stitching up Matt’s various wounds was really not the best time to be answering questions, though in fairness she hadn’t waited either when it had been her turn. She supposed she couldn’t blame this man. “So?”

“So.” The man—Foggy, he’d said on the phone—swallowed audibly. He made a passable imitation at a steady voice as he continued, “So what’s your story? You one of these…” he gestured weakly behind him, at the scraps of fabric that used to be Matt’s black costume.

“I’m a nurse,” Claire answered, giving Matt’s wounds a test prod with gloved fingers. The lidocaine should be kicking in about now. “Not an idiot.”

Foggy snorted. The man was silent for a moment, then said, harsher, “and what’s his story? Do you know?”

_Not enough. Don’t know if I want to._

Claire let the question hang in the air, a few heartbeats too long. “You rather I say it, or him?”

Her eyes flicked up just in time to see Foggy clench his jaw, his own gaze hot on Matt’s face. “Fair point.”

Claire looked back down. “I need more light.”

Foggy brought his blood-splattered phone closer, the white glow exposing the ugly rips in Matt’s torso. The cord grazed Matt’s shoulder, and Foggy hastily pulled it away. Claire reached over and began probing this next gash for debris.

Foggy watched—she noticed that he’d never looked away, even when it got ugly. From the lidocaine injections to probing the wounds, the saline rinses, every stitch, every pass of the needle through ragged tissue and flesh bleeding red, red red—Foggy never looked away.

It occurred to Claire that patching up Matt Murdock was getting harder and harder every time—and not just because he seemed to get himself beaten up worse and worse. They’d gone from patch-ups in a well-lit apartment to sutures by the light of Foggy’s phone and the neon glow from the billboard across the street. At least Foggy had borrowed Matt’s phone charger.

As Foggy had sarcastically put it, “you expect a blind man to have lights?”

The same thought seemed to have occurred to Foggy. “He got lucky, didn’t he? As in, you can still patch him up here. It’s not—” he drew a ragged breath, then forced out, softer, “relatively speaking. You said—you said you’re a nurse. You’ve seen worse.”

Claire blew out softly. “Yeah.” As a nurse, she’d really prefer to have proper medical facilities and give Matt proper medical attention—the gashes were clean but deep, and she wasn’t sure if they nicked his liver or a kidney, not to mention the various blunt trauma Matt’d received to—well, everywhere. He could still develop any of a number of conditions in the next day or three—various hematomas, traumatic pancreatitis, whatever. A lot of things needed surgery that she couldn’t do on a couch. But he’d die in a hospital—she believed Matt on that one.

“So what happens when it gets worse?” Foggy’s hands shook, the light from his phone wavering. “What happens when it gets bad enough that you can’t patch him up on the couch?”

Claire blinked back damp in her eyes. “I don’t know.” She has asked herself that before, with no answer every time. All she could do was hope that Matt’s super-senses would tell him if he really had something that sutures and tape couldn’t fix.

“You’d let him _die?_ Fucking _die_ here, instead of calling 911?”

Claire dropped the saline. “ _How dare—_ ” The _you_ died in her throat as she realized that yes, Foggy was crying; it wasn’t just her tears blurring her eyes.

She looked away and down, and picked up the saline bottle where it was glug-glugging onto Matt’s floor. Her hands shook. Her heart was hammering so hard she thought it could wake the dead—or Matt.

The light from Foggy’s phone danced wildly as he wiped his face on the arm of his jacket. He didn’t turn the light back toward Matt immediately; the beam lit up the floor instead, a gloomy ray of white. There were streaks of blood on the floor.

“I don’t want him to die,” he croaked out. Maybe it was safer to admit this in the dark. “He’s my partner. _Business_ partner,” as if anyone would mistake him for another vigilante. “We’ve been best friends since college. I thought…I _thought_ …”

Claire sniffled once, twice, blinking the last of her own tears away. “I need the light.” Her voice was far south of harsh, but her nerves could only take so much. “Pull yourself together—one patient’s enough for tonight.”

 

Cleanup was a mess; Matt’s couch was a lost cause. Claire left behind a lot of antiseptic and gauze for Matt—and Foggy, if Foggy could bring himself to help Matt change the dressings.

“No heroics for—for a long while. I can’t be at every Dumpster to fish him out.” She set a bottle onto the floor beside the couch. “Give these to him once every four or five hours.”

Foggy eyed the bottle, then at the motley collection of used needles, syringes, drugs, and packages of suture thread he was helping her pack up. “Where do you _get_ all this? Work?”

“Internet.” Claire nodded toward Matt’s prone form. “He pays.” That’d be _stealing_ otherwise.

Foggy stared. To his credit, he did not voice any comments about the legalities, risks, and other very valid concerns about purchasing drugs from online pharmacies (Claire had lectured Matt about it before). Then again, it’s not as if a vigilante could obtain prescriptions from the walk-in clinic down the street.

Claire dropped her gloves into the trash can and slung her kit over her shoulder. “I’ll come back tomorrow to check on him.”

“Hey. Claire.” Foggy caught up to her at the door, digging into his pocket as he went. He pulled out his wallet, and from there, a stack of cash. “Here.”

Claire stared, then looked up at him sharply. “I’m not taking _payment_ —”

“For your cab,” Foggy interrupted. “Both ways. Matt—he owes you that much, at least.”

“That’s _your_ wallet,” Claire pointed out.

Foggy smiled thinly. “Business partners.” He held out the cash again, eyebrows rising.

Claire eyed him for a long, wary moment but accepted the cash, giving the stack a quick thumb through. It was too much…but the extra could go toward restocking her med kit. Still all for Matt in the end, so she didn’t feel too bad about it either way. “Thanks.”

Foggy shook his head. “I’m sorry about…before. I…I was a dick.”

“Yes, you were.” Her voice was cool, but she smiled a little, to take out the sting. Because honestly? She wasn’t sure he was wrong. Claire knew better than almost anyone else that for Matt, authorities were a one-way ticket to the hospital morgue.

Foggy held the door; she toed on her shoes. “If he gets worse, call me.”

“If— _when_ ,” Foggy amended, “when he gets better?”

Her turn to smile thinly. “Don’t.” It was…slightly easier, when those were the only calls she’d get. The only kind she could accept. “I’m sorry.”

Foggy’s brows furrowed. “Why?”

So many reasons. Claire remembered the red of Foggy’s eyes, the red of Matt’s blood, the way Foggy never looked away. She thought of her unpacked suitcase, thought of her airplane flight.

Her hand closed around the burner phone in her pocket. Matt would call her again. But one day, when Matt got beyond her means to save…one day, when the unthinkable happened, it’d be Foggy making that last call.

“No reason,” she said quietly, and crossed the threshold.

**Author's Note:**

> Matt did have the light on for his roof exit, but I don’t recall Claire or Karen turning on the lights when they were there. There were light fixtures, but those would come with the apartment. I figured it was likely the landlord would remove all the light bulbs to keep as spares, since it’s not as if a blind man would need them. From the lighting in 1x09, it looked like it was barely dawn when Matt crashed in.
> 
> There are many, many complications from getting beaten up all the time (and getting slashed with a blade), most of which need surgery to fix. There are also several steps for cleaning and suturing flesh wounds even if they don’t need surgery. I wasn’t surprised when the show glossed over such details, but my nod to relatively realistic medicine was that I assumed Matt was not too badly injured--despite appearances--if he only had some stitches (instead of surgery, external fixation for broken bones, IVs, etc. etc. that Claire couldn't have helped with outside of a hospital setting). I just could not swallow Claire operating on Matt on his couch/floor, so I decided Matt got off easy. This is also the reason for Claire's relatively calm demeanor instead of panicking about whether Matt will live or die.


End file.
